


A carefully calculated Halloween

by DoctorTooStrange



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Bad Jokes, Best Friends, Erin Gilbert is hopeless, F/F, Fluff, Grand Gestures, Halloween, Holtzbert slowburn, Sweetest timeline, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8379724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorTooStrange/pseuds/DoctorTooStrange
Summary: You’d think that fighting ghosts for a living would make Holtzmann slightly less enthusiastic about Halloween. You’d be wrong. Luckily, a Holtzmann Halloween is a happy Halloween, especially for the three women she calls family.





	1. A letter for BOO!

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever posted. Most of what I write ends up sitting on my computer never to see the light of day. But there's something about the idea of Holtzmann loving Halloween and the Ghostbusting ladies that made me want to share! I spend all day writing science and recently moved to a foreign country where I know no one so this is as fluffy as fluff can fluff.

Holtzmann had been taunting her three friends about Halloween since August. 

One week, she told them that she would be releasing all of the ghosts from the containment unit into a brownstone on the Upper East Side and selling tickets for a real haunted house. That idea was unanimously vetoed by every member of the team. Erin was actually still pretty worried that Holtz might do it, though. It had been pretty quiet around the firehouse of late and Erin suspected, based on the amount of time Holtz had spent locked in her lab lately, that Holtz had some new equipment she wanted to test. That proposal, however insane it was, was somehow overshadowed by the many, many (so many) other proposals floated over the months leading up to Halloween. Ecto-1 had been seasonally orange since the autumnal equinox. Holtz had enforced a strict "Halloween movies only" rule since October 1st. Erin could count on one hand the number of times she'd heard music other than the "Nightmare before Christmas" soundtrack coming out of the lab recently. 

On October 25th, they’d come down for breakfast at the firehouse to find black embossed envelopes addressed to each of them. Any doubt that the envelopes were from Holtz was immediately dispelled when the invitations (as they turned out to be) spontaneously combusted upon reading. 

Turns out, combustion is oddly ineffectual for an invitation. The invitations definitely said Halloween. That was certain. The rest was a bit more fuzzy. They may have said “Wear a costume”. Alternatively, they may have said “Dress up”. Those two statements could be vastly different on any normal non-Halloween day but Erin was fairly confident in her interpretation. 

Erin was not typically interested in Halloween. Something about seeing a ghost that no one believed in for a year of your adolescence put a damper on enjoying people wearing sheets and pretending. But Erin Gilbert would be damned if she didn’t come up with the greatest costume of all time (or at least of the Ghostbusters) this year. Somehow she never escaped the competitive-ness of grad school. She was all about feminism and lifting up other women and all but she couldn’t help that she also always wanted to be the best, especially when it came to Holtzmann-involved activities. She was fairly confident that neither Patty nor Abby would fall into the “sexy bunny” trap but they were not easy prey. As she worked, she assured herself that her sudden interest in clever Halloween costumes had nothing to do with the butterflies she felt at even the thought of the blonde engineer from whom the invitation originated.

Over the weeks since Holtz began mentioning Halloween, Erin had developed a formula for the perfect Holtzmann Halloween costume:  
A: Handmade.  
Holtzmann would buy nothing from a normal store. She only bought things when they absolutely could not be found in a dumpster.

B: Clever.  
Science was Holtzmann’s first love, but cheesy jokes were definitely a close second. This paradigm was especially true if the jokes made one of her friends (usually Erin) uncomfortable. So ideally Erin should parameterize the clever with making her friends uncomfortable.

Erin had carefully manipulated these variables over the past several weeks, seamlessly* integrating hypothesis-testing on Holtzmann at mealtimes. Unfortunately, this process left little time for execution once she had calculated a perfect option. 

\- Oct 31st - The firehouse had been silent all day. On any normal day – silence this complete would be terrifying. Generally, the absence of noise from Holtzmann’s lab was a sign of impending disaster. On Halloween, it was downright ominous. They had been banned from the lab for weeks now. Holtzmann had even gone so far as to make an eye scanner for the door. Erin definitely hadn’t taken to hovering outside the door to see if she could catch a glimpse of anything (or anyone). Based on what she discovered while definitely NOT hovering, she wasn’t even sure that Holtz was in the building. Now that she thought about it (as if she had stopped thinking about it), she hadn’t seen Holtz in three days (and 6 hours but who’s counting?). 

At precisely 6:30 PM (eastern standard time), Erin Gilbert marched downstairs in her newly finished costume. She knew that Abby had been handing out candy to “trick-or-treaters”. Ever generous, Abby insisted on giving out full-size candy bars, which was completely insane at Halloween in New York City, when you ran the only ghost-entrapment service in the world. 

Erin was proud of her costume. It was clever. If it got uncomfortable (or if she decided that it was too inappropriate for the unknown activity) she could always remove the outer layer and go as a Parisian mime… and potentially never speak again. Abby looked up as Erin came down the stairs. Erin stopped mid-stairs.

“Are you wearing a butt on your chest?” Erin asked, less confused than amazed. 

Abby turned around so she could see the back of her costume. It was a plane. 

Abby looked so proud of herself. “Get it!? I’m an ASS-tral plane!!!” She squealed excitedly. 

Erin physically restrained her palm from hitting her face. 

“Did you have to make the butthole so prominent?” Erin asked, barely containing her laughter. 

“I’m a scientist, Erin, not a child. I can handle a butthole.” Abby deadpanned. “And besides, if this is inappropriate, I can take off the outer layer and be a mime!” Abby added. 

Erin groaned internally. 

Now that Abby had received sufficient acknowledgement of what she clearly considered to be the height of humor, she took a moment to look at Erin’s costume. Erin had on a large piece of cardboard with a periodic table on it. A single element was colored in red: Fe. 

“Oh GOD Erin! Seriously?! A PERIODIC table? Are you KIDDING ME?! You don’t get to talk about my butthole if you went with a menstruation pun. Let me guess, if it was inappropriate you were going for mime too?!” Abby had caught that she and Erin were wearing matching black turtlenecks and black pants under their costumes. 

“At least I wore a beret!” Erin laughed. Erin took over handing out the Halloween candy from Abby, hoping to spare what remained of their “trick-or-treaters” the too-prominent butthole in the center of Abby’s chest. 

After a few minutes (and about a hundred candy bars), Patty joined them. 

Patty looked like a goddam goddess. Erin panicked. *WHAT HAD SHE BEEN THINKING!? A period pun!?*

Abby was much less flustered by Patty’s “costume”. Her whole face was screwed up like she was trying to take each individual piece of the costume and put it into its appropriate place.

“SAMHUIN!” Abby yelled, after a weird silence in which Erin considered both bolting and vomiting. 

“Baby, I figured that would take at least 3 more minutes! This way, I’m wearing a costume and I can educate y’all on the origins of Halloween at the same time.” Patty smiled at her friends, totally unfazed by the significantly less elegant costumes they were wearing. 

Erin tried to figure out how Patty had managed to dress up like a day from the Gaelic calendar and still look like she was headed down the red-carpet at the same time. Usually, her calculations were pretty spot-on, but she was beginning to doubt her capacity to accurately assess the Holtzmann hypotheses. 

Before she could run upstairs and pretend she’d never tried to pass of period humor for a Halloween costume, Erin heard the distinctively un-American siren of Ecto 1. “Let the games begin.” She thought.


	2. Journey to Halloweentown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghostbusters engage in some good old-fashioned emotional self-flagellation en route to a very Holtzmann Halloween.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry, there had to be just a hint of angst to make the fluff a little fluffier!

Erin opened the door to the firehouse a ball of anxiety resting in the pit of her stomach. What if she had misinterpreted this whole thing? The invitation had been quite formal. She looked over at Abby to see if her friend shared her unease. Abby looked excited, anxious, but definitely on average excited. Even unflappable Patty shared that look. _They_ definitely weren't trending on ill.

Erin held the door open for her friends. Not that she was hoping to hide behind Patty in all her glory, but she was seriously considering trying to slip her cardboard frontispiece off while Holtz was admiring the larger woman's costume. Maybe she should trigger a history lesson to create a diversion…

Ecto 1 waited outside the firehouse, orange for Halloween with the ghost crossed out in black. Holtz had even painted a little bowtie on the ghost with pumpkins on it. Where Holtz found the time for car-detailing in between almost blowing them all up on a daily basis and planning a mysterious Halloween extravaganza, Erin had no idea. In spite of her worsening anxiety, Erin couldn’t help but admire the blonde’s dedication to detail (when those details didn’t involve safety). There was no half-way with their Holtzy.

At the open door of the hearse, Holtzmann beckoned them forward with a bow. This gesture, over-enthusiastic as it was, drew Erin’s attention to one key detail: Why was Holtzmann wearing white silk gloves? As if triggered by the gloves, Erin, who had been dutifully examining a speck of dirt on her shoes, finally allowed herself to fully look at the engineer. 

Ever the scientist, Erin had carefully catalogued each one of Holtzmann’s many varied tooth exposures. Each smile, smirk, grin, and grimace had been categorized over months of attention. Holtzmann was wearing the lopsided effervescent grin that she only wore when she was up to something big. The last time Erin had seen it was the day Holtz had finished a tiny device that Erin could carry in her pocket. When activated, the device formed a high-frequency ecto-projection barrier. Holtz had arrived at Erin’s desk with this self-same Cheshire cat smile on her face, activated the barrier (without notifying Erin of course), and dumped a bucket of slime on her. 

This particular smile was one of Erin's favorites, it was Holtzmann at her Holtziest. Erin was so captivated in fact, that by the time she managed to tear herself away from the smile, Abby and Patty’s costumes had already been assessed, approved, and moved into the waiting vehicle. Holtzmann, deviant grin included, was wearing a full-on tuxedo, tails and all. Every piece of the suit gleamed, down to the seasonably orange top-hat and yellow-tinted monocle. 

“Dr. Gilbert, if you please.” Holtz bowed slightly and gestured for Erin to get into the front seat of the car. Erin couldn’t move. Numbers whirred through her mind. How had she made such a serious miscalculation? Maybe she should call MIT and see if they wanted her to return her PhD. She’d worked hard for it and all, but no one with a PhD should be this much of an idiot.

With a smile that reached so far into her eyes that it was practically in the top-hat jauntily perched on top of her usual poof of blonde hair, Holtz touched Erin’s elbow gently guiding her to the front seat. Erin ignored the jolt of electricity derived from any contact with Holtzmann, managed a weak smile at her friend, and gingerly entered the car, shifting the cardboard on her chest self-consciously.

As soon as the vehicle was in drive, Erin’s brain went into hyperdrive. She had meant to impress Holtz, but maybe, as non-traditional as the blonde was, Halloween was some sort of formal event in her world. Over the months and weeks leading up to this day, Erin had never once heard Holtz mention a costume. Erin was so deep in her self-conscious reverie that she failed to notice the tremor in Holtzmann’s usually steady hands as she pulled the Ecto 1 out into the New York traffic. She failed to notice the concern in the engineer’s eyes as Holtz noted how uncomfortable her friends were in their brilliant homemade costumes. Erin even failed to notice as that beloved lop-sided grin faltered.

Holtzmann looked into the rearview mirror and smiled at Abby and Patty – “You guys look just PLANE amazing!” She winked.

“Holtzmann, unless your Halloween costume is a screen-accurate KFC Colonel, you’re going to have to justify why I look like both a literal and figurative ASS and you look like f*cking Dapper Dan over there.” Abby chided, uncharmed. 

“Actually, same question.” Patty jibed. Both Erin and Abby glared daggers at the thoroughly non-embarrassing Patty.

“I’m the Master of Ceremonies!” Holtzmann exclaimed less perturbed by Abby’s ire than Erin’s silence.

Halloween traffic in midtown was predictably terrible but somehow Holtz had them cruising over the George Washington Bridge quickly.

“Holtz, why are we in Jersey?” Erin spoke for the first time since leaving the firehouse.

“Everything is legal in New Jersey.” Holtzmann smirked.

Clearly, she’d been paying attention the nine-thousand times Erin had played the Hamilton soundtrack in the firehouse in an attempt to drown out Jack Skellington.

“Actually” Holtzmann corrected herself “We’re just passing through the Garden state.”

Abby groaned. “I’m sitting on a plane, Jillian. If I had known we’d be in the car for forever, I would have removed it before getting in.”

“Just trust me, ok?” Holtz asked, without a trace of her normal sass. Her usual thousand-watt smile dimmed to 500 watts, she took a deep, shaky, breath and continued, “I promise, it will be worth it.”

“As long as whatever radioactive trash heap you have waiting for us at the end of this endless drive accidentally destroys my costume, we’re good.” Erin muttered far more loudly than she intended but her internal monologue on what she had already termed "Costume-gate 2016" precluded any possibility of seeing Holtzmann's usually unperturbable smile dim 250 watts more. 

To Holtzmann, the car felt about 20 degrees cooler than normal as her three friends, her three only friends, stewed. Maybe she had miscalculated. She wasn’t great at empathizing with others. Heck, she wasn’t even really good at identifying her own feelings. They were unquantifiable, confusing, and sometimes so fleeting that she wasn't sure they had happened at all. Maybe she should have just told her friends what she was planning instead of trying to surprise them. They just meant so much to her and she was never sure how it was appropriate to communicate their importance. She wanted to do something special for them, to make them feel less alone, less isolated, more… appreciated. 

Her jaw clenched. Holtz knew she could be hard to cope with sometimes. It’s hard to love someone who literally sets you on fire if you get too close. She knew it was difficult to understand her intentions. She flirted and moved from one project and person to another at such a rapid rate that most people gave up on her in a month. She had never had friends like these. Friends who made her want to be steady and kind instead of flippant and focused on her project of the moment. 

She’d never had an Erin Gilbert before. Someone who was so driven that she couldn’t stop moving forward, even when it seemed like the whole world was conspiring to stop her. Someone who kept up with Holtzmann’s ideas and made her feel like she could do anything, be anything, even sweet and thoughtful. This was the farthest she had ever let anyone in. She had let these women inside her carefully crafted bravado and now she had ruined it. All because she wanted to show them how much their care and friendship meant to her. She’d thought this through so many times, carefully manipulating the variables to make the most amazing Halloween surprise but she must have missed something, no surprise there. They had really been Holtzmann-ed.

Twenty silent, awkward, minutes later, Holtzmann pulled the car into a long, winding, driveway. It was twilight. In front of them, loomed a dark mansion. Lightning flashed illuminating a cliff and the river in the distance. 

“Holtzy, you know I love you baby, but if you released the ghosts from the containment unit into this creepy-ass house and you’re about to hand me a proton pack, I will throw you off the palisades.” Patty broke the tense silence, smiling.

Holtz smirked. “No equipment necessary Pattycakes.” she murmured as she opened the front door for Erin and then nimbly skipped to the back doors for Patty and Abby.

Holtz let her nervous energy propel her and, pushing her self-doubt to the back of her mind, ran up the steps of the mansion in front of them. At the top of the steps, she flipped around towards her friends gesturing widely to either side, “Welcome to Halloween!” She exclaimed. Lightning forked behind the mansion giving Holtzmann's shock of blond hair and now gleaming blue eyes a menacing air. 


	3. Holtzmann's Haunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann provides a hauntingly beautiful Halloween.

Abigail Yates, Patricia Tolan, and Erin Gilbert stood at the base of the stairs to the most obviously haunted mansion in the world exchanging worried glances. 

Abby, as generous with her friends as she was with Halloween candy, assumed that whatever Holtz had waiting inside was both dangerous and brilliant. With Holtzmann, that combination would be equal parts thrilling and terrifying. She girded herself, adjusted the plane on her back and bravely climbed the front steps to join Holtzmann, smiling warily but smiling none-the-less. 

Ever pragmatic, Patty was mentally cataloging famous residences along the palisades. This marble monstrosity had Greco-Roman columns and looked like it could house a small army. She began to seriously worry that Holtz had arranged an interview with the ghost of George Washington whose Revolutionary War headquarters were nearby, or Benedict Arnold, maybe General Cornwallis. All Patty knew was if they encountered one of the founding fathers, she would have some choice words for them on the 3/5th's compromise. Patty thought back to Holtzmann’s casual Hamilton reference in the car, but no that was on the other side of the Hudson... Holtz couldn’t have dragged Hamilton's ghost himself here just to impress Erin? Could she? Patty knew Holtzmann had it bad for the red-headed physicist but casually dragging the ghosts of revolutionaries for a chat with her crush was a bit on the nose. Patty straightened her gown, and, with a steel spine, walked up the marble staircase to join her friends. 

Erin Gilbert, doctor of particle physics, was the last to join her friends. Erin was seriously wondering if Holtzmann had been exposed to a bit too much radiation. She felt fairly certain she would have noticed the signs of radiation poisoning given the careful attention she paid the blonde, just casual, friendly, careful attention, nothing weird. Maybe Holtzmann had hit her head while planning this evening and arrived at the wrong and statistically significantly more haunted address. At least if Erin was ecto-projected on she would have a more legitimate excuse to remove her embarrassment of a costume. The cool night air brushed against Erin’s cheeks which were peaked with red from both shame and anger, emotions she aggressively directed at herself for believing that Holtzmann might return her affection if she managed to create a costume worthy of the engineer. Without breaking even a moment of her reverie, she trudged up the stairs acknowledging that the sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could return to the firehouse and crawl into a pit of self-loathing and never come out. 

As soon as Erin joined them at the entrance to the manse, Holtzmann smiled at her friends eagerly – “Let’s do this!” she grinned and opened the creaking doors wide.

Holtzmann dodged inside the doors quickly and brought out three candlesticks set in gold holders lighting them nimbly and handing one to each of her friends still standing on the stone threshold. Disembodied piano music wafted out of the now open doors, staccato and haunting, as if a skeleton was tinkling the ivories nearby. Abby supposed that with Holtzmann in charge a skeleton might actually be playing the piano. 

Holtzmann ushered them inside, closing and securing the doors behind them, and led them into the dark foyer, their candlelight bouncing off the checkered floor and marble walls, illuminating portraits of unrecognizable figures in gilded frames. With brisk and obviously nervous efficiency, Holtzmann walked to an inner doorway, tails flaring behind her. Holtzmann cleared her throat and turned to her friends. 

“As you know, Halloween is the celebration of the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture.” She winked at Patty. “Halloween is the time when the barrier between the living and the dead is thinnest. Halloween celebrates both the bounty of the harvest and the reality of death.” Holtzmann seemed to be gathering momentum as the speech went on, each word punctuated with a nervous lilt and moving more quickly into the next. “I wanted to start a tradition, where each Halloween, we stop to celebrate the bounty of our friendship and the breaking down of barriers internal and external, including, but not limited to, the barrier that brought us together.” She ended this statement with a small chirp, glanced wildly at her friends with a small, slightly manic smile, and opened the doors behind her. 

Confused and touched by Holtzmann’s earnest speech, the three women faced the entrance to the salon. The disembodied piano music grew louder with each step they took towards the unknown. 

The room was lit by a thousand twinkling lights, each embedded in a silvery chandelier. From the entranceway, it felt like stars glittered down on them. The room was richly furnished and in the corner, a ghost appeared to be playing a piano-forte. As Holtzmann led them into the room, they were surrounded by light and warmth as more than a dozen ghosts danced to the haunting music in perfect harmony. Circling elegantly around them, their gowns of light twirling and dipping in time with the lilting ghostly waltz. 

The three women peered incredulously at the room around them, utterly devoid of reason. So many ghosts, yet none of them menacing. Abby half-expected a ghost-Mr. Darcy to come marching in and ask for her hand. 

Holtz, smiled lovingly at her friends, unwilling to break their dream-like reverie with words or explanations. She watched as Abby and Patty laughed and joined gleefully in a gavotte. She smiled as Erin stood surrounded by light, mouth agape. 

Erin felt like she was stuck in a tractor beam. She couldn’t manage to move her legs. Eventually, she managed a single word: “How?”. She thought she even managed to quirk her eyebrows. 

Holtzmann grinned at her, mischief returning to her blue eyes at the look of wonder on Dr. Erin Gilbert’s face. “Weren’t you listening? The barrier is thinnest at Halloween! I used the ghost lure I've been working on to call them to the edge of the barrier but NOT through. Once the ghosts were at the barrier, I used my newly improved tractor beam to keep them in place!” Erin’s brain did about a thousand calculations in thirty seconds to figure out the likelihood that this would all end in disaster. In the end, she settled on a single variable, the delight in the engineer’s eyes as she watched her friends enjoy the result of her efforts. 

“But this is just an amuse-BOOche!” Holtzmann continued, unable to keep the words from tumbling out once she'd begun. The other three women craned their necks around towards their brilliant engineer – eyes wide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference - the piano music in my head was Victor's Piano Solo from the Corpse Bride (even though it's in 6/8 not 3/4 like a real waltz). 
> 
> Thanks for the kind words and kudos on this. Halloween is my favorite day of the year and I recently moved to a country where it's not really celebrated so I've been crazy homesick all week. It's totally lifted my spirits (pun intended) to share Halloween with you all.


	4. Let's do the time warp again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about to get so fluffy because I want every Halloween cliche ever. I would apologize but I'm not sorry. 
> 
> The tense bothered me this whole section for some reason so I'm sorry if it's a bit cocked up.

Holtzmann was practically jumping out of her skin. Clearly, the months of planning in secret were hard on the engineer. Eager to let all of her secrets out at once, she babbled, so frenzied that her friends could barely understand her. 

“Whoa there, Holtzy! Let’s just take a moment and enjoy this!” Abby laughed, still amazed by what Holtz had accomplished. 

Holtzmann, however, could not be contained. She’d planned, she’d waited, she’d hid. She’d dealt with it when everyone was aggravated with her secrecy. All of her barriers were down. She simply couldn’t hold any of it back anymore. 

Completely unable to form coherent statements, she simply rounded them up and bodily moved them through the door out of the salon. 

Regaining some sense of composure, she started to explain “Once I managed to hold those ghosts in place just on the other side of the barrier” she nodded towards the room behind them “it was easy to start figuring out ways to manipulate them! Those ghosts are just going through the motions of what they did in life. I tried compelling them to do things that I wanted them to do for a while, but it felt a bit abusive so I came up with an alternative solution.” Recognizing that she was getting ahead of herself, “GAH! You’ll see!” she finished hastily. 

Holtz force-marched them into the next doorway – rushing in ahead of them with a skip to press a button near the door. She turned on the spot to watch their faces, her coat-tails twirling around her. 

Abby furrowed her brow, immediately recognizing the opening notes of the Rocky Horror Picture Show as a giant pair of lips were projected into the room. Rather than the expected red, the lips were made out of translucent green light, as if constructed entirely out of ghosts. The light seemed to originate out of a machine in the corner but the lips were three-dimensional, fully present, and moving in the center of the room. 

Unable to contain herself for a moment more, “IT’S AN ASTRAL PROJECTOR!” Holtzmann blurted in a strangled voice, much more loudly than she planned gesturing wildly, her eyes lit with held-back excitement. She looked at Abby, eyebrows perched near her hairline, a hopeful smile playing across her whole face, as she waited for Abby to realize what was happening. 

Every year before Halloween, Abby religiously donned her Dr. Frank-N-Furter cosplay and dragged Holtzmann to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror. This tradition was as much about Abby’s love of Rocky Horror as it was Holtzmann’s hatred of the voyeurism inherent in a bunch of straight people sitting in a room and cat-calling Tim Currie (or an actor representing him) for a few hours. The blonde loved the movie but hated the ritual while Abby loved the ritual more than anything. Abby’s favorite part of every year was doing the time warp with a thousand strangers and Holtzmann pelvic thrusting next to her. This year, she hadn’t dragged Jillian with her. In fact, Abby hadn’t gone at all content to sing-a-long and time warp at the firehouse with her haphazard little family. 

Abby looked around her as the opening scenes played out. Her eyes lighting up the first time ghost-projection-Frank appeared in front of her. Holtzmann pushed her into the space where Frank was moving and Abby stepped into the role, tears filling her eyes. Holtzmann knew she always wanted to be a part of the show but her insecurities held her back when she thought about joining “one of those groups”. The “those” always being obvious to Holtzmann who had seen her face when she watched performances of her favorite show. Her internal narrative made it so hard for her to even leave the firehouse sometimes. She’d become so adept at hiding it that few people realized how crippling her insecurities were. She may proudly march out of the firehouse dressed as Tim Currie in drag once a year but the other 364 days she tried to cover as much of her body as possible. 

Patty wrapped her arm around Holtzmann’s shoulders smiling lovingly down at the engineer while the three of them watched Abby enjoy her moment in the sun. 

After playing through all of Abby’s favorite scenes, Holtzmann gently moved them on, insisting that Abby could come back later.

Holtzmann, on a mission to get every last secret out, moved them at a frenzied pace through room after room of astral projectors. Each one playing one of their favorite Halloween movies. Apparently, the month-long marathon had been just as much research as fun for the engineer. Patty, though she insisted that she hated Halloween movies, gleefully took the role of Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus forcing Mary and Sarah on Abby and Erin respectively. Erin, blushing happily, acted as the Sally to Holtz’s Jack Skellington. 

Holtzmann, more impatient with each room, danced from part to part, constantly focused on the next room, the next item on her checklist, the next moment focused on one of her friends instead of remembering the next secret to reveal. 

Finally, as the clock approached midnight, Holtzmann slowed. Stopping in front of the final doorway, Holtzmann inhaled once, slowly and nervously. Squaring her shoulders, she placed one silk gloved hand on the doorknob.


	5. A very un-Holtzmann Halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann unveils the final Halloween surprise, her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about to get so teeth-rottingly sweet. I hope everyone is happily hungover after a night in Holtzmann costume. I certainly am.

Holtzmann had spent the last three months doing the most un-Holtzmann-like things for this moment. Three months of careful planning and execution, all with the appropriate paperwork, safety equipment, and signatories. Now her hand was on the final door. Her three friends gazed at her, trust in their eyes, already amazed by what she’d done for them. 

Now that Jillian Holtzmann was here, knowing what was on the other side of this door, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to go through it. A piece of her wanted to stay right here, surrounded by her little family, their faces flushed with anticipation, their smiles adoring… Holtzmann opened the door and led her friends into the center of her exposed heart. 

The Ghostbusters entered a brightly lit ballroom and were assaulted with a crash of applause. Holtzmann, smiling stiffly, stepped aside to let her three friends in, bowing slightly as she gestured, demurring to their entrance. 

Erin Gilbert blinked in the bright light, tears pricking at her eyes as she tried to get her bearings. “Rhythm of the Night” played somewhere in the distance but all she could see was the nervously grinning, blushing, blonde engineer expectantly watching their faces. 

Upon entering the ballroom, Abby’s first emotion was fury. The first time she enters a ballroom to raucous applause and she’s wearing a pasty mold of her boobs with a sphincter proudly emblazoned in the middle? She was going to kill, Jillian. The fury quickly subsided as she looked around the room. Far from being out of place, Abby’s costume seemed to be gaining favorable attention from the gathered crowd. Abby pushed her glasses up her nose as if to check that she was seeing things correctly but she swore she could see Bill Nye in the crowd wearing a graduation hat and a poor imitation of lab glassware. That couldn’t be right… could it?

Patty, unaware of the flabbergasted reactions of her friends, entered the room as if she always expected to be greeted by a cheering crowd. Pulling herself up one vertebra at a time to her full height, she simply smiled with every tooth she had, beaming as if this was just the natural response to her entering a room. 

Almost at the same moment, all three women noticed an enormous banner behind a banquet table lined with luminescent green overflowing Erlenmeyer flasks, metal pipes, and treats shaped like Bohr’s atomic model, the planets, miniature proton packs, and the Ghostbusters logo. The banner read: “Welcome to the First Annual Ghostbusters’ Halloween ‘Bodies in Motion Ball’!” 

The three women were stunned silent. Finally, Erin turned to Holtzmann, confused “You organized a ball for us?”, her brows furrowed as she tried to reconcile the Holtzmann she knew, all chaos and motor oil, with the Holtzmann standing in front of her: smiling awkwardly in a shining tuxedo, cheeks flushed with discomfort at being found the center of attention for anything other than a quick quip, a glorious invention, or a silly dance. Holtzmann swallowed the nervous knot at the base of her esophagus and reached into her lapel pocket. “Actually… it’s a fundraiser…” Holtzmann breathed quickly with a small nervous laugh, jerkily handing them an invitation. 

This invitation was different from the one they had received only six days earlier. It was black with radioactive green lettering dripping off the page. Perhaps most importantly, it didn’t ignite upon receipt. It read: “Dust off your handmade Halloween attire and your most groan-inducing puns for the First Annual Ghostbusters’ Halloween ‘Bodies in Motion Ball’! All proceeds benefit the Ghost Girls’ Foundation for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics”. 

The rest of the invitation blurred as Erin’s eyes filled with tears, her palms sweaty as she hastily dashed them away trying to make some sense of the baffling piece of paper clutched in her hand. 

Holtzmann stood frozen, watching her friends, her heart in her throat, hoping that the invitation was explanation enough. She was so far into sensory overload that she wasn’t sure if she could even explain. “I’ve been selling tickets for months….” She started, stuttering by the third syllable. “The paperwork for the foundation is back at the firehouse if you need proof, I had to fill out all these forms, my handwriting is shitty, but I think we’re a 501c3 now…” she babbled. “We’re the board of directors once you sign the papers, we can fund research, and run STEM programs for girls in schools and…” She stopped mid-sentence hoping that her friends would say something to fill the gaping hole in her thoughts as she stood in front of them, hat literally and figuratively in her wringing hands, totally exposed. 

All three of them were crying now. Holtzmann’s brain flashed through calculations. Good tears? Bad tears? She waited, the silence ringing in her head only exacerbated by the cacophony around them. “There’s a clause in the mission statement…” she started again only to be silenced as her friends enveloped her. 

The knot in Holtzmann’s chest loosened considerably only to tighten once more as she saw Jennifer Lynch, from the mayor’s office, approaching the dais. “I hate to break up this touching moment, but I need to borrow our Master of Ceremonies for just a quick moment.” Jennifer interrupted grabbing Holtz by the elbow and marching her to a podium at the center of the dais forcefully, a tight smile painted on her face. 

Upon reaching the podium, Holtzmann, in the most un-Holtzmann-like feat imaginable, pulled out a small crumpled piece of paper, cleared her throat and began to talk into a microphone. “Thank you all so much for joining us this evening for the inaugural fundraising event for the Ghost Girls’ Foundation.” She read briskly and mechanically from the piece of paper in her hand, eyes down, her other hand clenching and unclenching at her side.

“As women in STEM, we, the Ghostbusters, have each experienced the thrill of discovery and the despair of being ridiculed for pushing the envelope of conventional science.” Holtz’s voice shook as she looked desperately for her friends in the crowd. Her eyes found Erin’s and, plumbing their depths for strength, the blonde steeled herself for another sentence. “I started this foundation so that fewer women have to experience the isolation of society’s disbelief.” Her eyes blazed fiercely, boring into Erin’s. “You all are here tonight so that a new generation of women scientists aren’t forced to be still like Ada Lovelace or have their work appropriated by their superiors like Rosalind Franklin. The goal of the Ghost Girls’ foundation is to believe in women and the unknown. Until I met these brave women…” She gestured with a jerky movement to the other Ghostbusters, Erin’s heart seized and sputtered in her chest, “I didn’t know what it felt like to have people truly believe in me and my capacity to shape our understanding of the world. Our goal is to provide that sense of belonging to as many girls and women as possible, so that no ‘Ghost Girl’ goes unbelieved or unseen. Thank you again for your generous support.” She stopped abruptly, her eyes falling to her feet as she brusquely dismounted the podium. 

As the crowd applauded, Jennifer Lynch sidled up to the Ghostbusters clapping enthusiastically “I am so glad you guys are finally in on this whole thing. If I had to deal with that woman in my office one more time…. I don’t think the drapery will ever be the same. You know she tried to change STEM to Science, Technology, History, Engineering, and Mathematics. Can you imagine? ‘STHEM’? It’s like a bad lisp!” Jennifer Lynch continued, her words falling on deaf ears, as the three Ghostbusters looked over at their friend, whose slight form was now swarmed by a crowd of adoring strangers, amazed. 

It was like she was standing, paralyzed, in a snow globe. Erin Gilbert felt the crowd of people rushing around her. Music played. Lights flashed. Words passed her by. Somewhere Abby laughed and Patty joked. But for Erin, time stood completely still as realization crashed down on her: she was completely and irrevocably in love with Dr. Jillian Holtzmann. Irascible, unstoppable, kind, loving, Jillian Holtzmann. 

Erin’s reverie was interrupted by Abby who had grabbed her elbow yelling excitedly, “Brian Greene’s here! Let’s go tell him that string theory is total bullshit and see what happens!” Abby had dragged her halfway across the room before she was floored by the sight of Neil Degrasse Tyson in a homemade Pluto costume wearing a sign that said: “Still not a planet!”. Momentarily derailed, Abby changed course only to be stopped by Lawrence Krauss in a Rosalind Franklin costume. Erin couldn’t focus… not even on Lawrence fucking Krauss. Instead, she laughed distractedly at the punch-line when he asked if they had ever heard “the one about the capacitor and the inductor” and scanned the crowd for that tell-tale flash of blonde hair. 

Erin couldn’t tell if it had been moments or hours since she had last seen Holtzmann. Every moment the depth of her feelings for the woman became more overwhelming as she saw touches of Holtzmann everywhere, from the automaton scientist replicas in all of the nooks and crannies providing information about their lives and science, to the many people who had really let their freak flag fly with no small amount of coaxing from the engineer, Erin assumed. Erin couldn’t help but smile as the harried Jennifer Lynch, who had apparently been conscripted by Holtzmann to organize this event, ran past her muttering about “putting out a fire.” Every piece of this event was so much Holtzmann and not-Holtzmann at the same time. Everything, the foundation, the ball, the people, was so far from Holtz’s lab, so counter to all of Erin’s expectations. Given all of the evidence she’d collected on Dr. Jillian Holtzmann, Erin never would have predicted this event. Holtz had ventured so far from her comfort zone, all for them, for her. Erin had never felt so seen.

Erin felt a familiar presence by her side. “I think I saw her sneak off into the doorway we came in. She seemed like she needed a break from all of this.” Patty gestured broadly to the party, smiling. “I don’t know who you’re talking about…” Erin stuttered. Patty pursed her lips at the red-head “Don’t think Patty doesn’t see you scanning the room like you’re about to jump out of your skin if you don’t catch that crazy soon. Your whole body is practically screaming ‘pent up sexual tension.’ Just go find her already!” 

Erin’s brain seized, she didn’t realize she was that obvious. “Don’t look at me like that, like you’re so good at hiding things… You think all of this is for me!? Honey, why’d you think she named a whole foundation for you?” Patty continued unperturbed by the shock radiating off the smaller woman. With a shove from Patty, Erin stumbled towards the door where she hoped Jillian Holtzmann was waiting, maybe for her.


	6. A Halloween for Happy Endings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann fixes something broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really pleased with how fucking cheesy this turned out.
> 
> I hope everyone has a fantastically fluffy Halloween! 
> 
> Thanks for reading my first ever, it's really brought some cheer to my quasi-lonely Halloweekend. :)

Erin Gilbert opened the door they had come into the ballroom through, hoping that Holtzmann would be waiting on the other side secretly dancing to the 80’s music that filtered through. She was disappointed when the hallway was devoid of floppy blonde hair and an infectious smile. 

Erin wasn’t quite sure where to begin looking. She could guess that the event made the blonde uncomfortable. An event like this was Holtzmann’s worst nightmare. She wasn’t surprised Holtz needed a breather. Sure, on any normal day if Neil DeGrasse Tyson had stopped by the lab, Erin could imagine Holtz greeting him with wild gestures and overbearing enthusiasm. But whenever the Ghostbusters were asked by the mayor’s office to attend huge events like this, Holtz could only Holtz for so long before she crawled inside of herself. When that happened, the blonde always hid, only to reappear later generating the same level of quirk for another hour or minute. Rinse. Repeat. Until the blonde was totally exhausted and crashed for days, wanting only to be around her machines which demanded no bravado, no sly winks, and no social capital. She still couldn’t believe that Holtz had managed to step so far outside of herself for so long to organize this event, she’d even filed the appropriate permits. The engineer must be exhausted. But where would an exhausted and overloaded Holtzmann go? It occurred to Erin instantly. 

Erin had already checked three rooms. Knowing that Holtzmann would be with her machines was one thing. Actually finding the engineer in a mansion where literally every room was filled with machines was a totally different task. Erin wandered listlessly from room to room, searching each room systematically but absentmindedly. 

Finally, giving up hope of finding the engineer, Erin wandered towards the room where the projector played ParaNorman. They'd spent only a few minutes there, Holtz too anxious to pause for long as the clock inched closer to midnight. When Erin had first seen the movie she’d sat in the back of the movie theater by herself for hours, crying, missing the friend who had seen her back then and wishing for her own happy ending. She remembered how different it felt to her now, watching with her friends, tears of happiness in her eyes at being believed and cherished. 

The astral projector was on when she entered the room. Even after a year of exposure to Holtzmann, Erin still couldn’t believe that someone could create such incredible things from basically just garbage and bold ideas. She stood for a moment, surrounded by green light, in bemused wonder before she noticed the orange top hat sitting on the ground near the projector, and the tell-tale flash of blonde hair and white teeth that signaled Holtzmann’s presence. 

Holtzmann had the projector half disassembled. “This one got stuck for some reason.” The blonde mumbled, wrench clasped between her teeth, white silk gloves discarded, and hands covered in grime. Erin smiled, blinking as if to fix this moment in her memory. Her heart expanded in her chest. She could go her whole life and never see Holtz give a speech like the one in the ballroom again, as long as she could see her, hands filthy, surrounded by gears and levers, all grit and determination, forever. 

The projector was indeed stuck: it could only play the happy ending. A community surrounding a small child who could see ghosts with love and praise. Holtzmann couldn’t remember if the projector had been stuck when she got here, or if it had become stuck once she’d replayed this scene for the 10th or 11th time as she hoped that this night was enough. Enough to make the lonely ghost girl that was still at Erin Gilbert’s core feel overwhelmed with love and praise. One night couldn’t undo a lifetime of neglect from a world that didn’t believe what you could see with your own eyes. But maybe, a lifetime of making sure that more people were seen could. 

Holtz looked up at Erin, hoping that the physicist could read her mind just this once. “I…” completely lost for words at the blazing look in the physicist’s eyes, Holtzmann stuttered to a stop. 

“Dance with me.” Erin pulled the engineer up by her outstretched hand and wrapped her into an embrace with near surgical precision. 

As she pulled Holtzmann to her, the slight woman pliant in her capable arms, Erin felt the final puzzle piece fall into place. She felt the knot of anxiety at the bottom of her stomach, present for her whole life, ease. Holtzmann relaxed into her embrace as they, with fits and stops and furtive smiles, danced, surrounded by the ghosts of their pasts but no longer haunted. 

\----------------------------------------------

Epilogue: One year later

Dr. Erin Gilbert sat in the back of a chaotic classroom. Erin gazed lovingly at the woman in the center of the classroom in the clean white lab coat the insurance company insisted that she wear whenever they did school programs. This was probably a smart choice, given that no one knew what substances were embedded in the one she wore at the lab, or even what its original color was. Erin loved to watch Holtzmann on school visits, surrounded by a sea of squealing, adoring, little girls in matching white lab coats. Today, Holtzmann pushed all of the desks to the sides of the classroom and the girls were testing robots they had built over the past several months with an elaborate obstacle course of Holtz’s design. 

Every peal of bright laughter or triumphant shout made Erin fall deeper in love with the brilliant engineer. Every time a girl from one of their after-school groups announced to Dr. Gilbert that she would be a scientist when she grew up, Erin’s whole body seized with pride at what Holtzmann had created, all for her. 

Holtzmann raised $300,000 that night. Enough to fund a whole year of science programs in New York City. After investing some of it, they would have enough to fund some of these brilliant young women through college and beyond. 

Tonight was the second annual Bodies in Motion Ball. With Patty and Abby in charge of organizing it, it was set to be an even bigger success. As Halloween approached, the barrier thinned and thousands of people bought tickets to see Holtzmann’s machines in action. Erin and Holtz had been working on their costumes, they would be two hydrogens and an oxygen, together forming the most important molecule on Earth, water. But this year, it was Erin who had a secret to keep in the form of a tiny pocket sewn to the inside of her second hydrogen molecule holding a delicate ring, crafted with care from the keyring of a Swiss army knife.


End file.
